What is EMIR?

European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) is a wide-ranging package of requirements from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) designed to improve transparency and reduce risks in derivatives markets. It requires market participants to report details of all derivative contracts (interest rate, FX, credit, equity and commodity) to registered Trade Repositories.

In 2017, ESMA introduced the EMIR RTS Rewrite to make the regulation more proportionate and lower administrative reporting burdens, while ensuring supervisors have enough information and high-quality data to monitor risks, and intervene if necessary.

Transactions that need to be reported

Financial and non-financial firms trading derivatives must report details of all derivatives trades to a Trade Repository (TR) which gives access to European and global regulators on request. This includes details of the trades and any event thereafter that affects the valuation or terms of the trade. EMIR covers over the counter (OTC) and exchange traded derivatives (ETDs):

Both parties to the trade must report to a TR

Transactions, positions (optional), valuations and collateral must be reported on a T+1 basis

What changed with the EMIR RTS Rewrite?

There are 30-40 new fields. Some fields have been removed, some have changed names, and others have new values.

Very few existing EMIR fields remain completely untouched. There is further use of LEIs where BICs, etc. had previously been permitted.